From FWPD personnel to Clubland scenesters, the consensus is that the new strip club is gonna be awesome. Very few Cowtown joints – especially ones in impoverished, dangerous neighborhoods – get such good hype. Does the recently opened EC, on a rough patch of already-rough East Belknap, live up to the positive word-of-mouth?
Last Call visited the club during its grand opening a couple of weeks ago. The place looks like Fort Worth’s own little slice of “Vegas, baby” but not because it sits near the Chrome Grill roadhouse and Smoke Pit boob-becue (a shaved-ice stand would look like the Taj Mahal compared to those two “unassuming” joints). EC is simply beautiful – the purple crushed-velvet seats, the fancy wall mirrors, the VIP room’s smoked-out windows, the perfect lighting in which everything appears to be lit from either behind or beneath. The best part may be that the club is no bigger than a bomb(shell) shelter. Talk about intimacy.
Where EC could use some help is in (surprise) the dancing department. It’s not that the girls weren’t hot or sexy. Their demeanor was just a tad – how you say? – aloof. Even though the rest of the audience didn’t fare any better, my guests and I hung around for a while in EC and not one performer asked to give us a lap dance. The entire time, most of the hotties sat at the bar in a tight-knit group, smoking and drinking as if they’d already punched out and were enjoying anonymity in the comfort of their neighborhood Chili’s. Sorry, ladies, but if you wanna keep your shirts off in the skindustry, you’re gonna have to realize that the only thing that separates you from the zillions of beautiful naked women on the internet is your body heat. Once you forget that small but significant fact, your days are numbered.
The dancers’ lack of enthusiasm, however, should not keep you from swinging by. Elegance Cabaret is honestly a great hang-out – for guys, dolls, and all persons in between – and word on the street is that the food is also top-notch. Once the new dancers whom EC is looking to hire come along (shhh!), it’s probably gonna take a restraining order to keep me away.
‘Naughty’ Nikki at No-No’s
A dumb-ass horndog can sometimes forget that the half-naked goddess onstage at the local strip club is also a person. Last Call received an accidental but oh-so-important reminder last week after a routine visit to New Orleans Nights.
While investigating a larger story (seriously), I ran into “Naughty” Nikki Norwood. The 21-year-old looks jaw-droppingly fantastic in her Daisy Duke get-up, even though her childhood was anything but: When she was 7, according to an interview on The Howard Stern Show, she was hit by a car and almost killed. When she was 9, she says, her two sisters died in a fire at Christmas.
Nikki got her start in the skindustry at a young age. She was one of the most sought-after barely legal porn stars in the country – hence her appearance on Howard. (Though retired from film, she can still be admired in all of her glory in two dimensions on her web site, www.naughtynikki.com.) She’s been working at No-No’s for about a year.
Too bad Nikki will be on vacation during the club’s Second Annual Born 2B Wild Party, Tue., Aug. 23. Sponsored by Ironhorse of Texas, the event features $1 cocktails from 6 to 8pm, and people dressed in leather will be given raffle tickets for door prizes. For more info, go to www.neworleansnights.net.
Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
Elegance Cabaret
2412 E Belknap St, FW.
817-222-0392.
New Orleans Nights
7101 Calmont Av, FW.
817-732-0000.
